SECTION III

The Battles for the Faith

This section comprises chapters 15 through 24. They are listed below. To go directly to any particular chapter click on the link to that chapter. Otherwise you can scroll down as you read chapter by chapter.

Chapter 15    French Politics   
Chapter 16    Mutation   
Chapter 17    The Conspiracy  
Chapter 18    Almost a Tragedy  
Chapter 19    The Lost Leader  
Chapter 20    The Appeal to Arms  
Chapter 21    Death's Coup D'Etat 
Chapter 22    The Hollow Truce  
Chapter 23    Recommencement of the War   
Chapter 24    Hoodwinked France  

On the 31st of March, 1547, Francis I died. Vacillating in his temper, arbitrary in his rule, selfish in his policy, yet generous in his private relations, he was the Don Quixote of a vicious chivalry. By his death, one more link was broken which bound France to feudalism.

Francis was succeeded by his son Henry II, a prince who inherited many of the qualities, and who adopted the essential policy of the paladin king; but he did not sway an unvexed scepter. Schism, dangerous and ever growing, was within the temple; the court was fretted by hostile cabals; the Commons were turbulent; France bristled with rebellion; while from without, the pope had his clutch upon Henry's dominion, England fomented discord, and Spain, under Charles V,  "Forging the prodigal gold of either Ind
To arméd thunderbolts," was a perpetual menace.

Let us glance for a moment at the politics of the court at this critical epoch, and form the acquaintance of some of the grand historic figures who were destined to sway France, and to mold her future—some by their wicked ambition, others by the healthful play of their noble aspirations.

The reign of Henry II was emphatically an embryo period. It contained the roots of "many and tall trees of mischief," which afterwards covered France with an accursed shade.

Initiation into the vile mysteries of the temple of court intrigue—this is essential.

Four rival factions formed the substratum of the state.

Anne de Montmorenci, constable of France, the minister and favorite of Henry II, headed one clique. Montmorenci was able in the cabinet, and had won wide fame in the wars of the age; but his character was stained by bigotry and fierce rancor.

The leader of a second party was Diana de Poitiers, duchess of Valentinois, the king's mistress, who, through her wit and beauty, possessed boundless influence with her royal paramour.

Catharine de Medici, a daughter of the illustrious Florentine house which had given two popes to Christendom, the consort of the impetuous king Henry II, led a third faction in this scramble for power. Catharine's character had barely shown itself during the lifetime of Francis I; but now she began to emerge from her former obscurity, and during the successive reigns of her three sons, she possessed supreme influence in the government. The wily queen surpassed Machiavelli himself in tortuous statescraft. By constantly adjusting and readjusting the equilibrium of the contending factions, she prevented each from overwhelming the other; played one off against another; and by prolonging this contest, she extended the duration of her own power.

The fourth faction of the court was that of the princes of Lorraine, better known in history as the Guises. These were the greediest and most unscrupulous jackals of this courtly pack. The Guises were looked on as foreigners, and their power in France was a mushroom growth.

René de Lorraine, who fought with Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and who more than once brought the claims of his house upon Provence, Naples, and Jerusalem to remembrance, ordained in his last will that Antoine, his eldest son, should succeed him in Lorraine and Bar, and that the other, Claude, should inherit his possessions lying in France: these were estates scattered throughout Normandy, Picardy, Flanders, and the Isle of France, with the baronies of Joinville, Mayenne, Elboeuf, and the counties of Aumale and Guise, all destined a little later to give names to distinguished warriors and prelates.

Among the chivalric leaders of Francis I, this Claude, who styled himself "Guise," whose domain had been raised from a county into a dukedom, made a brilliant figure. His bravery and miraculous preservation at the battle of Marignano, the central part which he took in preserving the peace of the kingdom during the captivity of the king after the fatal rout at Pavia, the pains he took to ingratiate himself with the masses and to cement the foundations of his power, ere long made him a great name in the realm. To crown all, he made a fortunate marriage, wedding a princess of the royal blood, Antoinette de Bourbon. From this union sprang six sons, full of vital energy, three of whom devoted themselves to the church, and three to arms, all achieving fame in their respective spheres. These were Francis duke of Guise, sometimes called prince of Joinville, Charles archbishop of Rheims and cardinal of Lorraine, Claude duke d'Aumale, Louis cardinal of Guise, Francis grand prior, and René marquis d'Elboeuf.

Such was the formidable house of Guise, propped by its six stalwart pillars; and even in the reign of Francis I, their rise and prowess towards power had been so rapid and insidious, that the dying king bequeathed to Henry a legacy of distrust of their talents and ambition, which he thought—rightly, as the sequel proved—were of an order to endanger the peace of France.

Between these factions raged the utmost hate. Usually they were at open war; but when peace reigned, it was but a hollow truce—mars gravior sub pace latet, war bitterer for the disguise. A coalition had been formed between Diana de Poitiers and the constable of France; so that the chief of the Montmorencis and the courtesan duchess for a time swayed the scepter with untrammeled hands. The duchess disliked Cardinal Tournon, and one of Henry's first acts was to dismiss this personified inquisition from the public service. Montmorenci favored this move, and seeing that his only strength lay in Diana's smiles, he exerted himself to the utmost to flatter the king's passion for her.

Whatever was done or left undone owed its origin to no zeal for the public welfare, but was simply a maneuver to deceive the king, whom all parties conspired to blind, and who throughout his reign was merely the empty shadow of an authority which was really vested in powers behind the throne.

Such was the political situation at the commencement of the year 1548.

The ambitious projects of the house of Lorraine were rendered doubly dangerous and difficult to foil by the masterly tactics of Francis duke of Guise, one of the most remarkable men of that age. As a soldier, he had distinguished himself by the capture of Calais from the English, who had usurped it in a preceding century, and by his defence of Metz against the Spaniards. He possessed in an eminent degree most of those external advantages which captivate the multitude—a commanding presence, dignity, affability, an ingratiating address, and a certain chivalry. These rendered him the admiration of the populace, and made him the delight and ornament of the court.

His aspiring schemes were of course powerfully supported by his influential brothers with their hosts of retainers, all as anxious as himself to share the patronage and emoluments of office.

In pursuance of her favorite policy of an adjusted equilibrium, Catherine de Medici coalesced with the Guises, whom she both hated and feared, against Montmorenci, who stood in the path of their ambition.

It was against this powerful confederacy that the constable had to struggle. Feeling his inability to resist it single-handed, he had already, as we have seen, called Diana de Poitiers to his side. He now resolved to attach the princes of the blood to his party. The next heirs to the throne after Francis and the other sons of king Henry, were Antony de Bourbon and the prince of Condé.

Antony de Bourbon, who had become king of Navarre by his marriage with Jane d'Albrét, the daughter of the good queen Margaret, was weak, indolent, vacillating, and too fond of ease to take any active part in the troubled and stirring scenes which were soon to convulse the kingdom. He was only roused from his habitual torpor by the hope of recovering that portion of his realm which had been seized and retained by Spain. As his success in this object depended entirely upon the armed assistance of France, he was easily drawn into the ranks of the ruling party by empty professions of friendship and hollow promises of material aid.

His brother, the prince of Condé, who was connected with Montmorenci by a marriage with his niece, was a man of more determined character; and though not possessed of those high qualities which are requisite in a successful party leader, he compensated the political defect of ordinary talent by great moral courage and inflexibility of purpose.

With many others of the higher nobility, he had espoused the reformed creed; and though he was too frank and open to shine as a diplomatist in an age when fraud and mendacity were the prime merits of a negotiator, he yet brought vast strength to the ranks of Protestantism. His finances were scanty, but he was liberal to his followers; and when life was at stake or honor in peril, lie displayed a promptitude and magnanimity of bearing which commanded universal respect.

Condé was the intimate friend of the Chatillons, an ancient family which had once exercised sovereign authoritv over Nantua and Moulonét, two towns in the neighborhood of Geneva.

The marshal de Chatillon had married Louisa de Montmorenci, the constable's sister, by whom he had three sons, two of whom achieved an immortality of fame. The eldest of these, Odét, became bishop of Beauvais and Cardinal Chatillon. He was a keen observer of the world, mild in his address, polished in his manners, an adept in the intrigues of the day, and possessed of all those winning and conciliatory arts which disarm an enemy and fix a friend.

The second son was the famous Gaspard Chatillon de Coligny, admiral of France, one of the brightest and grandest names in history, doubly consecrated by a life of sublime fidelity to Christian duty, and by martyrdom.

The gallant Francis Chatillon d'Andelot was the youngest member of the family; he held the office of colonel-general of French infantry.

The two younger Chatillons, better known by their seignorial appellations of Coligny and D'Andelot, were early initiated into politics by their uncle of Montmorenci, who placed great reliance upon their counsel and discretion. The fine talents of this famous family, their influential connections, their high offices, rendered them most formidable to the vaulting house of Guise.

D'Andelot became very early an enthusiastic adherent of the Reformation. His open and generous nature made him scorn concealment, and he frequently startled the court by his liberal conversation. On one occasion Henry II, upon hearing that his colonel-general had been heard to utter heretical sentiments, sent for him, on the advice of his favorite, Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, and interrogated him upon his opinions.

"How is this, sirrah?" said the king menacingly; "have you too become moon-stricken, that you utter this vile trash of Calvin, and rant like a common heretic against our holy mother church?"

Although D'Andelot had been cautioned to use prudence in his answer, he scorned to equivocate, and he replied firmly, but respectfully, "Sire, in matters of religion I can use no disguise, nor could I deceive God should I attempt it. Dispose as you please of my life, property, and appointments; but my soul, independent of every other sovereign, is only subject to my Creator, from whom I received it, and whom alone I deem it my duty to obey in matters of conscience. In a word, sire, I would rather die than go to mass."

This calm speech roused the king to such fury, that he drew his rapier and menaced the intrepid disciple with instant death. But when his rage cooled, he stripped D'Andelot of his honors, and threw him into the prison of Mélun.

This punishment had no moral effect. It was well known that the court was tainted with Protestantism, and that many nobles were as heretical as D'Andelot, though few might have the Christian courage so openly to avow their faith. It seemed partial and ungenerous to incarcerate a gentleman who had shown so much honor and daring. So that this imprisonment increased the popularity of the persecuted doctrines of the Bible. The reformers, jubilant over the support of D'Andelot, and trusting that all the members of his powerful family would espouse his creed, fearlessly assembled at the Pré-aux-Cleves, situated in the modern Faubourg St. Germain, and at that time one of the most fashionable promenades in Paris. There they sang the Protestant psalms of Marat in the open air. It became the fashion to visit these reunions; and many an idle courtier, who had lounged down to ridicule the "fanatics," as they were called, returned with his curses turned into benedictions, and his mocking laughter choked in prayer. Antony de Bourbon, king of Navarre, and Jane d'Albret, were habitués of these gatherings; and while they animated the preachers by their presence, they did not deign to disguise their attachment to the new opinions.

Coligny was remarkable for his caution in taking a step, but when he reached a decision he was inflexible. No one possessed greater intrepidity or more perseverance. Difficulties, instead of daunting him, only spurred him to greater activity, and served only to excite his ardor to surmount them.

It was his brother D'Andelot who first persuaded him to inquire into the justice of the Protestant claims. Coligny paused long. He studied carefully. Meantime he used his utmost exertions to secure the liberation of his brother. With great difficulty he at length prevailed on D'Andelot to acknowledge that he had spoken to the king too roughly. This acknowledgment, backed by the influence of Montmorenci, obtained his dismissal from the Mélun dungeon.

Pope Paul IV was very angry when the news reached him that D'Andelot was again at liberty. He imperiously demanded that he should be burned for heresy. Easier said than done. D'Andelot's uncle was then the arbiter of France; his brother, the cardinal of Chatillon, was one of the grand inquisitors. he would doubtless hesitate long before consigning so dear a relative to the flames; so the unhappy pontiff had to content himself for a while with less distinguished victims. The Guises shared in the sadness of the holy father on this account, and they set spies upon Montmorenci while his nephew was in prison, in the foolish hope of being able to find some ground on which to base an accusation against that persecuting Saul of favoring heretics.

Coligny, like Calvin, was of the strictest sect of the papists. In an age of almost universal license, no blot has ever been found upon his moral purity. He maintained several priests at Chatillon; he also established free schools for the education of youth. Upon joining the reformers he continued the same acts, simply substituting Protestant preachers for the former monks. Girt with his conscience and armed with his principles, he would have braved the universe. When a little later he did, after long pause, declare his adherence to the Reformation, there was no more vacillation, no more timidity, no more doubt; not D'Andelot himself was more open and inflexible.

"Coligny and D'Andelot," says their biographer Brantome, " were both endowed with such imperturbable equanimity and coolness, that it was quite impossible to put them in a passion, and their countenances never betrayed their secret thoughts and inward emotions."

So admirable in their mental structure and in their moral nature were these brothers, the first political leaders of Latin Protestantism; their brilliant genius, their constancy, their unwearied zeal, their unflagging faith, made them the idols of the French reformers.

In the field of persecution, Henry II walked in the footsteps of Francis I. He regarded the extirpation of heresy and the convention of costly and knight-errant tournaments as the double mission of his kingly career. "For the accomplishment of the one, he squandered the blood, the treasure, and the honor of France; in the pursuit of the other, he lost his life, dying "as the fool dieth."

That he might secure leisure for the gratification of his bias for pageants and autos da fé, a hollow truce of five years' duration was patched up between France and Spain, of which Henry could not say, as Francis I did on the dismal day of Pavia, "All is lost, save honor," for in this case honor went first.

Just before the declaration of this truce, in 1556, Charles V abdicated, after one of the most stormy, eventful, and checkered reigns in history. The self-deposed emperor retired into the monastery of St. Just, in Estremadura, where he spent his hours in vainly attempting to make a hundred clocks tick together, precisely as he had endeavored to wind up his subjects' consciences, and compel them to keep the time of the Vatican.

During the war just ended with Spain, in which Henry had been the ally of Maurice of Saxony and Albert of Brandenburg, who led the armed Protestantism of Germany, the cardinal of Lorraine had advised the temporary cessation of the religious persecution in France, in order to present the semblance of consistency.

Now the fires were once more lighted. Henry, to add dignity and importance to the executions, went in person to several of them. On one of these occasions he recognized an old domestic dying in the flames; his follower recognized him, and called out faintly from within the fire, "Save me, my king!" and the monarch was seized with such horror that, turning on his heel, he instantly quitted the scene, to hide his agitation and remorse in the depths of the Louvre.

But the reformers were not to be deterred from following the dictates of conscience. It was in vain that funeral piles were kindled in every town in France. The danger of martyrdom, while it excited every generous feeling in the hearts of the devout, and fanned enthusiasm to a white heat, also became a preventive to desertion. It confirmed the wavering. Many who would have acknowledged themselves persuaded in a theological dispute, would avoid the disgrace of yielding through dread of so unsatisfactory a proselyter as the fire.

In May, 1557, an event occurred which showed that the reformers were numerous even in Paris itself. Five hundred of them one night were assembled to celebrate the Lord's supper in a house in the Rue St. Jacques, opposite the College Plessis. The opportunity for a tumult was too good to be lost. The populace, instigated by the monks, gathered about the house, but no attempt was made to interrupt the service. When the assembly was dismissed, however, the reformers were assailed not only with threats and abuse, but with stones and rapiers. The darkness of the night would have enabled most of them to have escaped, had not lanterns been placed in the windows of the adjacent dwellings to illuminate the street.

Many were murdered; some few who had arms cut their way through the mob; but the old men, the women, and the children were left to massacre. In the midst of the orgie, some soldiers charged and dispersed the rioters; and while the guilty escaped, the innocent reformers, to the number of two hundred, were taken into custody.

Proceedings were immediately commenced against these, notwithstanding the fact that among them were many persons of distinguished family connections. The cardinal of Lorraine demanded that they should all be condemned to the fire; but the parliament had not so capacious a maw: they did not require a hecatomb of victims to glut their appetite; and after a long process, five of the Protestants were sentenced to the flames.

Fortunately for the others, Henry required some levies in Switzerland and Germany; the elector-palatine solicited the enlargement of these prisoners; and as it would have been inconvenient for the kind to lose the friendship of that prince, he reluctantly ordered them to be treated with moderation, to the infinite regret of the pontiff Paul IV, who loudly complained in the consistory.

While Henry was at war with Charles V, a decree, called the edict of Chateaubriand, was passed, which placed the reformers under the secular jurisdiction. But now the cardinal of Lorraine was desirous of devising some method of defeating that edict, which served as a shield to the evangelicals. Accordingly he advised the appointment of an inquisitor of the faith in France, who should leave the power to cite, interrogate, and punish suspected persons, and who should likewise possess, through a bureau of trained spies, mischievous and ubiquitous, the means of penetrating into the privacy of families, and of exercising an unsleeping surveillance over the whole kingdom, from the mountains to the sea.

The pontiff greedily seized on the idea, and appointed Matthew Oni, a Dominican monk, to that hateful office. The king and his council approved this investiture of a foreigner with absolute power within the borders of his kingdom; but the parliament, somewhat leavened with the progressive ideas, and not wholly infatuated, ventured to remonstrate. "Sire," said Sequier, one of the presidents of the parliaments, "we abhor the establishment of this tribunal of blood, where secret accusation takes the place of proof, where the accused is deprived of every means of defense, and where no judicial form is respected. Begin, sire, by procuring for the nation an edict which will not cover France with funeral piles, which will not be wetted either by the fears or the blood of your loyal subjects. At a distance, sire, from your presence, bowed down under the pressure of rural labor, or absorbed in the exercise of the arts or of trade, the people are ignorant of what is preparing against them; they do not suspect that it is proposed to separate them from your throne by the intervention of an irresponsible foreign tribunal, which shall wreak its unchallengeable will upon them, and deprive them of their natural guardian. It is for them and in their name that we now present our humble remonstrances, nay, our ardent supplications.

"As for you, sirs," continued the orator, turning towards the sycophantic crowd of counselors and ministers who surrounded the king, "you who so tranquilly hear me, and secure in the royal favor imagine that this affair does not concern you, learn that it is fit that you divest yourselves of that foolish notion. So long as you enjoy the king's friendship, you wisely make the most of your time—'tis your harvest; benefits and kindnesses are showered upon you without stint, and it enters into the mind of no one to attack you. But the more you are elevated, the nearer you are to the thunderbolt; one must be a stranger to the history of courts who does not know the trivialities which often precipitate disgrace.

"Under the present régime, even should that misfortune befall you, you could now retire with that fortune which would in a measure console you for your fall. But dating from the registration of this edict, your condition would cease to be the same. Mark! You will have for successors men poor and hungry, who, not knowing how long they may remain in office, will burn with a desire to enrich themselves at once and by whatever means. They will find a wonderful facility in doing so; for, certain of obtaining your confiscation of the king, it will only be necessary to bribe an inquisitor and two witnesses. Then, though you may be saints, you will burn as heretics."

This argumentum ad hominem of the subtle parliamentary orator, produced a profound impression upon the council, and also on the king, who was so affected that he remitted the consideration of the question to another day.

Apropos of this edict, it was just before the wily cardinal of Lorraine conceived his notable scheme for the extirpation of heresy, that the society of the Jesuits, the pests of modern Europe, commenced their machinations, under the protection of this same prelate. So early as 1550, the cardinal procured from Henry II letters patent, by which they were permitted to build an establishment in Paris.

The order of the Jesuits owed its origin to the efforts of a fanatic Spaniard, Ignatius Loyola, who, "poor, obscure, without a patron, without recommendations, entered that city—where now two temples, rich with paintings and many colored marbles, commemorate his great services to his church; where his form stands sculptured in massive silver; where his bones, enshrined amid jewels, are placed beneath the altar—and by his activity and zeal launched his protean propaganda.

"With what vehemence, with what unscrupulous policy, with what forgetfulness of the dearest private ties, with what intense and stubborn devotion to a single end, with what laity and versatility in the choice of means, the Jesuits fought the battles of their church, is written on every page of the annals of Europe during several generations. In 'the order of Jesus' was concentrated the quintessence of the Romish spirit, and its history is the history of the papal reaction against Luther. The order possessed itself of all the strong-holds which command the public mind—of the pulpit, of the press, of the confessional, of the academies. It was into the ears of the Jesuit that the powerful, the noble, the wretched, and the beautiful breaded the secret history of their lives. It was at the feet of the Jesuit that the youth of the higher and middle and lower classes were brought up, from the first rudiments to the. courses of rhetoric and philosophy."

Such was the order which, dominant in the south of Europe, now sued for admission into France. At the first their welcome was not hearty.

When Henry's letters-patent were presented to the parliament for registry, the procureur-general strongly opposed their reception, and the act of legalization was suspended in consequence of his remonstrances. But in 1552, the Jesuits obtained new letters-patent, which contained a peremptory order for their registration. The procureur-general, however, persisted in his opposition, and for two years more the question hung undecided. Finally, on the 3rd of August, 1551, the parliament decreed that, before the matter was definitely decided, the letters of the king and the papal balls which the .Jesuits had obtained, should be referred to the bishop of Paris and the dean of the Sorbonne Faculty of Theology.

The bishop, whose name was Eustace de Bellay, did not hesitate to declare "that the bulls of Paul III and of Julius III contained several articles which were contrary to reason, and which could not be tolerated or received in the Christian religion; that those in whose favor they were issued, by arrogating to themselves the title of 'Company of Jesus,' which could only be applied with propriety to the universal church, of which Christ was the head, appeared to desire to constitute themselves that church; moreover, as the principal object they proposed to themselves was the conversion of the Mohammedans, it would be better to give them a house on the frontier of the Ottoman empire, than in Paris, which was so distant from Constantinople."

The answer of the Sorbonne was not more favorable. Feeling persuaded of their ability to cope singly with heresy, and 

"...too fond to rule alone,"
able to
"Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,"

that body, by a unanimous vote, declared the new society "dangerous to the holy faith, calculated to disturb the peace of the church, and more fitted to destroy than to edify."

These two replies annihilated the hopes of the Jesuits during the reign of Henry II; but they plotted in the dark, and bided their time.

Meantime the truce with Spain had been broken; both kingdoms had placed large armies in the field, and the constable, Montmorenci, after sacking the town of Sens, and pillaging Artois, came upon the Spaniards before St. Quintin, which place, the admiral Coligny, one of the ablest captains of the age, held for France.

St. Quintin had been vigorously besieged, and though it was but indifferently strong, the gallant admiral had kept it for his king, while Montmorenci was coming to succor him.

On the 10th of August, 1557, the constable reached St. Quintin, and attacking the enemy with Quixotic indiscretion, suffered a disastrous defeat, in which he was himself captured.

In consequence of Montmorenci's captivity, the cardinal of Lorraine became the administrator of the government, and the family of Guise employed their opportunity in securing the hand of the Dauphin for their niece Mary, queen of Scots, and in promoting their adherents to all the influential offices of the court, the capital, and the provinces.

But upon this occasion the Guises' lease of power was not of long duration. Philip II, tired of the French war, and familiar with Henry's friendship for Montmorenci, played upon these chords a tune of reconciliation with his "dear brother of France;" and after several ineffectual attempts, the treaty of Chateau Cambrisis was signed on the 3rd of April, 1559.

Montmorenci immediately resumed his ministerial functions, and the humiliated Guises were completely stripped of their snug stations and usurped honors. The cardinal of Lorraine, however, who had contrived to render himself necessary to the king, remained near his person, like an evil genius, ever prompting the impressible monarch to wicked and :arbitrary acts.

The cardinal's next act was atrocious. By the treaty of Chateau Cambrisis, it had been stipulated that Henry's daughter Elizabeth should marry the king of Spain. The city was now crowded with illustrious Spaniards who had come to witness the marriage ceremony, and to accompany the young queen to Madrid. Henry's penchant for magnificent follies and splendid fêtes led him to celebrate the occasion with unusual pomp, and to prepare the lists of endless tournaments.

The bias of several prominent members of the parliament towards heresy was well known; and the independent and liberal action of the legislature on several recent occasions, had disgusted the bigoted cardinal and provoked the king.

Lorraine determined to make use of the Spanish marriage to wreak his vengeance upon the obnoxious legislators.

One day he entered Henry's cabinet, and delivered this infamous harangue: "Sire, although it would serve for nothing more than to show the king of Spain that you are firm in the faith, and that you will not suffer any thing in your kingdom which will disparage your excellent title of most Christian king, still you ought to proceed about it boldly, and with great courage. You must gratify all these grandees of Spain, who have accompanied the duke of Alva for the solemnity and honor of their sovereign's marriage with your daughter, by ordering half a dozen councilors of the parliament to be burned in the public square as Lutheran heretics, which indeed they are. By so doing we shall preserve the bulk of the legislature; but if you do not take these measures, the whole court will be infected and contaminated with heresy, even to the clerks, attorneys, and tipstaves."

The cardinal then, with the craft of those Jesuits whom he befriended, persuaded the king to go to the legislative chamber as if to consult his counselors on the measures to be taken for the suppression of heresy, but really to observe the responses of the members of the parliament, and if possible to ascertain their secret sentiments, by submitting to their frank consideration and judgment some project which should draw from them an avowal of their own heresy.

Montmorenci, instead of dissuading Henry from such black treachery, approved it in open council. Vieilleville alone, who records the incident, raised his voice against it, as degrading to the royal dignity, affirming that "he was about to take upon himself the office of an inquisitor, and that the cardinal's proposal would entirely destroy the joyous feeling of the public."

But the cardinal's advice prevailed. Henry convoked the Parliament, and in a few well-disguised and gracious words, begged the advice of his counselors upon the best means for the pacification of the kingdom. The more wary judges confined their remarks to general and vague expressions, believing that the use of language was to disguise one's meaning, as one of their later countrymen, the famous Talleyrand, phrased it.

Some were less cautious, or more honest. "Let us begin," said Louis Faur, "by examining who the real author of our troubles is, lest the same answer should be made to us which Elijah made to Ahab, 'It is thou that troublest Israel,' " and a look at Cardinal Lorraine directed the application to him. The celebrated Anne Du Bourg, the son of an illustrious family in Auvergne, and nephew of the chancellor of France, next spoke. He surprised his hearers by the boldness of his speech, enlarging upon the cruelties heaped upon the reformers, and remarked with emphasis, "While men are conducted to the stake for the sole crime of praying for their prince, a shameful license encourages and multiplies blasphemies, perjuries, debaucheries, and adulteries."

The courtiers trembled, for they considered this sentence as intended for the king and the duchess de Valentinois.

When Du Bourg resumed his seat, Henry rose in a great passion, and gave vent to a torrent of reproaches against the moderate party, and especially against those who, enamoured of the beauty of plain speech, had boldly avowed their sentiments.

On quitting the chamber, he made a sign to Count Montgomery, captain of his Scotch guard, who had surrounded the convent of the Augustines, where the Parliament was then sitting, with his men-at-arms. A fierce look directed towards Faur, Du Bourg, and three others, gave sufficient instructions for him. They were arrested in the midst of a parliamentary session, and immediately thrown into a dungeon—a high-handed violation of public law and official etiquette, the mere attempt at which, in the succeeding century, cost an English king his head.

Charges were instantly huddled up against the five counsellors, the trials were pushed on with indecent haste, and so hot was the anger of the king, that "he expressed a desire to see Du Bourg burned before his own eyes."

But before this brutal wish could be gratified, Henry's own life was abridged by violence; and singularly enough too, he was doomed to die by the blundering lance of that same Montgomery whom he had just employed in outraging the higher majesty of the Parliament, in the very sanctuary of justice.

At a tournament held in the Faubourg St. Antoine, on the 27th of June, 1559, the last of a succession of jousts which Henry meant should give éclat to his daughter's marriage, the king, after contending with and vanquishing several of his politic courtiers, elated by his success, challenged Count Montgomery to enter the lists with him. The count was reluctant to comply, but Henry would not accept his refusal. Finally Montgomery entered the arena; two fresh lances were given to the champions; the trumpets sounded the charge; the knights met, with a terrific crash, in mid-career; and when the dust rolled up, Henry was seen unhorsed, and with a portion of his captain's shattered lance protruding from his visor. The shiver pierced into his brain through the left eye; and after lingering through eleven days, he expired on the 10th of July, 1559, in the forty-first year of his age, and the twelfth of his reign.

If history has not scourged the character of this puppet king so severely as it has those of his monster brothers, Charles IX and Henry III, it is not because he was less deserving of obloquy, but because he was fortunate enough to cheat history by a death which struck him at the very moment when he had matured a plan for the extermination of French Protestantism. Henry II was as weak, as deceitful, and as execrable as any scion of the Valois line. Informers were encouraged by the prospect of reward to denounce the innocent; a casual, an ambiguous phrase was a sufficient warrant for arrest; suspicion was equivalent to proof; whoever sheltered a heretic was held to be a participator in his crime; confidence between man and man was lost; members of the same family distrusted each other; the worst passions of human nature were let loose by a bribe, and France became an extended dungeon.

It was in the reign of Henry II that the soubriquét Huguenots began to be generally applied to the French reformers. Like the names "Puritan," "Methodist," and "Abolitionist," this was originally a term of reproach; but the Protestants of France, like those of England and America, were wise enough to seize an epithet hurled at them as a missile, and wear it proudly as a jewel. In a few years this designation completely superseded all others: "Protestant" and "evangelical" were swallowed up in it; and Huguenots became the honorable and universal synonym of politico-ecclesiastical reform.

With the death of Henry II terminated a historic rivalry. Diana of Poitiers at length succumbed to the subtleties of Catharine de' Medici, who not only drove the courtesan from the court in ignominy, and confiscated her immense estates, but who actually appropriated the fair Diana's jewels.

The politics of the Louvre were once more revolutionized. Montmorenci, whom Catharine hated because he had coalesced with Henry's mistress, and put her authority under the ban, and whom the Guises intrigued to displace because he had deposed them and himself swayed the scepter, was one morning politely advised by the boy king to quit Paris, and take the benefit of the air at his country-seat.

The Guises were reseated in power. The feeble hands of Francis II, who was but sixteen when he ascended the throne, on the 10th of July, 1559, and poor Mary Stuart, were not old or energetic enough to hold the reins of government. Their uncles of Guise and Lorraine were kind enough to perceive this, and to relieve their majesties of the cares and honors of the state.

To be sure the witty Parisians were so unkind as to frame epigrams, and to assert that this philanthropic action of the bashful and modest house of Guise, whose probity was thus slurred, really held the king in duress. But when did a generous action ever fail to be misconstrued?

The naughty Huguenots took this view of the case; and esteeming it to be their first duty as loyal subjects to emancipate their king, they immediately prepared to stereotype their opinion into action. The Huguenots caballed. The king's duress bred a conspiracy. But while the conspirators yet plotted in the dark with an immature programme, another auto da fé was kindled, which caused all France to growl ominously.

Anne du Bourg had remained in prison since the death of Henry II. The cardinal of Lorraine, securely entrenched in power, and emboldened by success, ordered that noble counselor’s trial proceed. Du Bourg, though deserted by the craven parliament which had permitted itself to be dragooned into submission, defended himself with the utmost vigor and spirit: he challenged one of his judges, president Minard, his bitter personal enemy; despite of which Minard took his seat on the judiciary bench, and presided at the trial.

Du Bourg could not resist the impulse to upbraid this French prototype of the English Jeffries; and he concluded a scathing philippic by prophesying that this base judge would soon be called to appear before a more awful bar, when he would wish to be as guiltless as his prisoner then was known to be.

These words were quickly and strangely verified. As Minard was returning home one evening from the court, he was assassinated. This occurred in the night of the 12th of December, 1559. On the morning of the 23rd, Du Bourg, despite the herculean efforts made by the Huguenots to save him, was led out to be executed.

The counselor’s firm demeanor on reaching the fatal plaza, excited the sympathetic admiration of the hardened mob which haunted the gallows. Measures were taken to prevent his addressing them; the executioner was ordered to gag him, should he attempt to speak.

At the foot of the gibbet a crucifix was held before his lips, but he refused to kiss it; after which he was immediately pulled up and strangled, amid shouts of Jesu Maria from the human tigers below.

His last words were a prayer: "Father, abandon me not; neither will I abandon thee."

"Thus," says a historian, "perished Anne Du Bourg, in his thirty-eighth year, a man of rare talents, and yet rarer integrity, loved, wept, and honored even by many of those who did not share his faith."

After hanging for some time, the body was cut down and burned, the ashes being scattered to the four winds.

As in the classic story of the Roman Gracchi, so the martyred counselor, mortally smitten, flung his dust towards heaven, calling the avenging God to witness; and from that dust sprang ere long the embattled ranks of D'Andelot and De Coligny, eager to defend their faith and liberty.

While this tragedy was being enacted, the conspiracy of Ambois ripened. History has recorded few undertakings of a similar character in which the design was more extensive, the motives more just, the plan more skilful, the means more adequate, and the failure more miserable.

The Jesuits, ever watchful to obtain a foothold in France, now that their protectors of the house of Guise were the arbiters of the kingdom, ventured to emerge from their holes, and, though denounced by the parliament, the bishop of the metropolis, and the Sorbonne, to sue for legal recognition. This, through the finesse of the cardinal of Lorraine, was at length accorded them, and the privy council distinctly declared that "the Jesuits claimed no privileges hostile to the episcopal supremacy, the authority of curates, colleges, or universities, or to the liberties of the Gallican church."

The parliament, overawed by the execution of Du Bourg, and filled with servile counsellors, did not venture to baulk the cardinal for a third time; and after sprinkling rose-water, in the shape of explanatory articles, over the charter with dainty fingers, the Corps Legislatif and the bishops agreed to the act of incorporation, though an additional clause, which plainly indicated the distrust of the court itself, was appended ere the registration, which provided that "if, in the course of time, any thing should result prejudicial to the prerogative of the crown or the rights of the people, the constitution of the Jesuits might be reformed."

The legal recognition of this hateful tribunal filled the reformers with alarm, for they justly suspected that these mysterious and ubiquitous priests, who spun their webs in the dark, who invented every thing, who denied every thing, who even seized blank paper and, "after the manner of spiders, sucked heresy from it," would ally themselves with their patrons the princes of Lorraine, in a grand effort to annihilate the Huguenot idea.

The alarm of the reformers; the discontent o£ the nobility, excluded from all posts of trust, replaced in office by the upstart retainers of the house of Guise; Montmorenci, the king of Navarre, the prince of Condé, all disgusted by the haughty behavior of the cardinal of Lorraine—these circumstances seemed at once to warrant and to guarantee the success of an insurrection against the "hated foreigners" who, through their niece, ruled the king.

The discontented nobles and the Huguenot politicians at once formed a confederacy, the former to end the political usurpations of the Guises, the latter to protect their party against the repetition of those severities which were threatened by the ugly precedent of Du Bourg.

The conspirators held their first conversations at the castle of La Ferté, which was situated on the frontier of Picardy. The prince of Condé was unanimously elected chief; but he was not to be known as a participator in the plot until the decisive moment came. Condé accepted this position, annexing this reservation: "Providing nothing be done or attempted against God, the king, my brothers, or the state."

In the mean time a gentleman named La Renaudie, of a noble family of Perigord, a Huguenot, was selected to be the nominal head of the conspiracy. La Renaudie combined every quality requisite for the elaboration and direction of such a movement. Eloquent, energetic, persevering, intelligent, brave even to rashness, familiar, through a long residence at Geneva, with those multitudinous religionists who had been expatriated for their faith, no one could be better fitted to secure the cordial cooperation of the Huguenots.

On the 1st of January, 1560, the confederates assembled in a ruined chateau in the outskirts of Names—attracted thither by the cloak to their movements which the vast concourse of people who then crowded the city to witness the holiday fêtes would be—and here the final arrangements were made.

When night had fallen, and the conspirators had all gathered at the rendezvous, La Renaudie addressed them in a low but intensely earnest voice. In a few vivid sentences he painted the tyrannies of the house of Guise, dwelt with graphic rhetoric upon the injuries which they had entailed on France, affirmed his belief that the princes of Lorraine only waited for the death of the feeble and boyish king who might die at any moment under their skilful nursing, as the orator darkly hinted—to usurp the scepter of poor Francis II, and seat one of their own family upon the throne. "For my part," he continued, forgetting in his heat to observe that cautious monotone in which he had so far spoken, and rising in vehemence, "for my own part, I protest, I swear, I call God to witness, that I will never think or say or do any thing against the king, against the queen his mother, against the princes his brothers, against any of his blood; but that I will defend to my latest breath the authority of the throne, the majesty of the laws, and the liberty of France against the hateful tyranny of foreign. usurpers."

"We swear it!" echoed the band, bathed in the swarthy light of the stars, with upraised hands and uncovered heads. The tyranny of the Guises had excited such a feeling that no intervening danger, not the dread of the block, nor the awful pangs of inquisitorial torture, could chill the ardor. All signed the oath, shook hands in unison, embraced each other weeping, and loaded with imprecations any wretch who should be perfidious enough to betray the plot. Just before the separation, the fifteenth of the following March, and Blois, were fixed on as the time and place for the execution of their programme.

Ten minutes later and the old chateau of Nantes resumed its disturbed dreams; soon the conspirators were scattered to the four corners of France, each on his mission of mischief to tyrants.

The purpose of the confederates was to possess themselves of the royal person, to arrest the princes of Lorraine, and to vest the administration of the government in the prince of Condé. There was no intention to injure the king, but simply to release him from the duress of his uncles of Guise; and the distinct avowal of this principle won the confidence of all the loyal gentlemen in France.

Francis II was of a fragile and sickly constitution; and since, in the spring of 1560, he was a greater sufferer than usual, the court physicians prescribed a change of air and scene for the royal invalid. Accordingly the Guises transported him to the town of Blois, whose climate was mild and salubrious.

It was at Blois then, where the court was yet sojourning, that the mine was to be sprung upon the Guises.

For a time "all went merry as a marriage bell;" the confederates sailed over a placid and auspicious sea. Success seemed certain. The princes of Lorraine, charmed by the syren songs of prosperous wickedness, lay lapped in supine security, when suddenly the overconfidence of the chief conspirator withdrew the veil of secrecy, and every thing was revealed.

La Renaudie quitted the rendezvous at Nantes for Paris, where he was to station himself and direct the plot.

He lodged in the house of an old friend, Avanelles, a lawyer, who, suspecting mischief from the vast number of persons who called upon his comparatively uninfluential guest, mentioned his suspicions to La Renaudie. That gentleman very indiscreetly acknowledged the existence of the conspiracy.

The meddlesome and perfidious attorney professed to be well pleased with the plan and purpose of the intrigue, and after sucking its minutiae from his overconfiding friend, he hastened to the metropolitan residence of the Guises, and unfolded the whole plot to the cardinal's secretary, who instantly posted Avanelles off to Blois to apprize the court of the volcano upon which it trembled.

The messenger arrived travel-stained and weary, and his interview with Francis duke of Guise speedily interrupted the frivolous festivities with which his ambitious relatives amused the attention of the king.

Francis, unaware of the existence both of Avanelles and his news, was strolling in the meadows of Blois, while the agitated Guises interrogated the volunteer attorney. He found his principal solace and amusement in the company of his beautiful and at that time innocent young queen, Mary Stuart. Her harp often soothed the painful restlessness engendered by disease; and though flattered and worshipped and caressed wherever she appeared, though walking upon roses, she really seemed devoted to her royal husband.

The hair of the girlish queen was singularly beautiful, and curled in natural ringlets. It was then a custom to wear low skull-caps; these, as a matter of fashion, were considered regal; but Francis was so proud of his pet's head that Mary threw them off. The king delighted to hear the tones of her voice in singing, in speaking, in reading; and often, when sleep fled from his weary pillow, Mary would patiently lean over him, and lure the truant back by low, sweet chants, or by the touching music of her own dear Scottish ballads.

This was the queen who was, in later and more dismal years, arraigned for the murder of Darnley, her own husband.

She may have been guilty, for who can spell the riddle of corrupting circumstances? Early separated from her mother, trained at a licentious court by ambitious uncles, that firm, unyielding principle, that elevation of character which is developed and strengthened by judicious education, could hardly have been acquired. Instigated by hatred, beckoned on by passion, poor Mary may have erred most sadly in the melancholy hours of her later career; but now her generous and gentle nature still controlled her.

On the morning of Avanelles' advent, Francis and Mary, together as usual, were in the fields—pausing here on an eminence which commanded a wide prospect, there by the side of the magnificent Loire, and roiling away the hours in sweet converse. Francis, looking forward to a life of regal splendor, expressed an earnest desire for the time to come when, unfretted by his uncles, he might govern his own empire. Mary chatted of her native land, of the heath-covered mountains of Scotland, and many a quaint legend gathered from the superstitious gossip of her attendants.

Suddenly the duke of Guise joined them.

"A fair morrow," said he, "for the hopes of France. What says my royal cousin, what says his consort, to a hunting gallop to-day?"

A ready acquiescence was given; and returning to the castle of Blois, where Louis XI had been born, the court-yard was speedily filled with hounds and steeds, and ere long the merry party were flying over the country at great speed.

When the walls of Blois had been left far behind, Guise reigned up beside Francis, and informed him of the discovered plot, and told him that the hunting party was only a pretence for removing him from an unfortified town to the stronger protection of the Amboise donjon.

Francis was displeased that duplicity had been used, and turning towards his guardian he said pointedly, "It is so difficult now to distinguish friends from enemies, that perhaps it had been better for us to remain at Blois."

The duke replied that "he had acted from the truest motives of tenderness, fearing that any uncommon agitation might injure him in his present feeble and broken health."

Francis made no further objection to the journey, but contented himself with saying sadly, "What can be more injurious or painful than to see one's self an object of party hatred and contention?"

The princes of Lorraine were now in possession of the chief features of the plot to unseat them from the government. They also knew the names of a number of the actors in the émuete. Beyond this all was shadowy. Suspicion began where knowledge ended. Coligny and D'Andelot were supposed to be implicated; and though Brantome distinctly declares that the admiral had no part in the conspiracy, they were summoned to present themselves before the king at the earliest moment. Both hastened to comply with this requisition; and upon being introduced into the queen mother's chamber, Coligny spoke warmly against the bad administration of affairs, pleaded the cause of the Huguenots, and recommended that the penal statutes against them be expunged from the judicial code.

The chancellor, Olivier, and the moderates of the council, seconded this bold appeal, which was finally embodied in an edict, and published on the 12th of March, 1560. The edict appeared too late to strangle the conspiracy. The outbreak was to occur upon the sixteenth instant; the time had been changed from the fifteenth by the removal to Amboise.

Every thing now looked as black for success as before La Renaudie's admission to the recreant Avanelles the auspices had appeared bright.

Nevertheless Condé, no whit discouraged, went boldly to Amboise, and picking out a band of resolute men-at-arms from the body of his retainers, introduced them as his body-guard into the donjon walls.

But the Guises, aware of the plan of attack, took every precaution, filled the tower with their adherents, and posted the Chatillons and Condé in conspicuous places, and surrounded them with confidential persons who were pledged to prevent their joining the assailants.

Forewarned was forearmed; and when the Huguenots attacked Amboise, they were repulsed with great slaughter. La Renaudie rallied the fugitives, who returned gallantly to the charge; but their chief, surrounded by a party of his foes, after slaying a number of his assailants, was struck from his saddle dead by a bullet fired from a distance. The confederates then scattered in all directions. The pursuit was pressed with vindictive fierceness, and the body of La Renaudie was placed on a gibbet with the inscription, "Chief of the Rebels."

During the battle, the duke of Nemours recognized at the head of a Huguenot squadron a gentleman named Castelnau, for whom he entertained a warm friendship. He reined in his horse, and asked the Calvinist cavalier why he had taken arms against the king. "Our intention," was the reply, "is not to war against the king, but to expel the tyrant Guises from authority."

"If that be the case," said Nemours, "sheath your sword, and I promise you on my honor that you shall speak to the king, and I pledge myself for your safe return." Castelnau accepted these terms, and Nemours reduced his engagement to writing, and signed it; on which his late foeman followed him to Amboise.

Castelnau was seized upon his entrance into the town, put into irons, and despite Nemours' urgent remonstrances, he was sentenced to death, Guise insisting that Nemours had no authority to undertake to do what he had written and sworn to do.

On this proceeding Vieilleville makes this comment: "This caused Nemours great uneasiness and vexation on account of his signature; for had he only passed his word, he would have denied it, and given the lie to any man who should charge him with having plighted it, so valiant and generous was this nobleman." "A remarkable instance," observes Anquétil, "of the point of honor badly understood, which fears a crime less than the proof."

The Guises triumphed. They revoked the edict obtained by Coligny, arrested the prince of Condé, commanded that no quarter should be given the insurgents, and hung their prisoners on a gallows erected in the Amboise square. Those who escaped this death were condemned, without trial, to be tied hand and foot, and thrown into the Loire.

Many of the confederates were racked, and especially La Bique, La Renaudie's secretary, the object of the ministers being to secure some testimony which should implicate Condé, or at least justify his arrest. They failed on both points. Only one person was found who implicated the prince, and he spoke only from report, while La Bique doggedly refused to give any specific information, affirming that La Renaudie kept his own secrets, and only entrusted him with general correspondence.

Condé, on his part, was indignant. He concluded a long speech to the king's council in these words: "If any man has the audacity to affirm that I have instigated a revolt against the sacred person of the king, I renounce the privilege of my rank, and am willing to attest my innocence by single combat."

Then occurred a notable instance of hypocritical finesse. The duke of Guise, the secret author of the arrest, rose, and unmindful of the evident application of Condé's words to himself, said with apparent heat, "And I will not suffer so great a prince to be accused of so black a crime, and entreat you to accept me as your second."

Thus ended the conspiracy of Amboise with a liberation—Guise being as convinced of the treachery of the prince, as Condé was sensible of the duplicity of the duke.

"The Prince of Condé was liberated," says an old contemporaneous historian, "in the hope that the apparent confidence thus placed in his loyalty might throw the king of Navarre, the Constable, D'Andelot, and the Vidame of Chartres off their guard, and thus enable the Guises to seize their persons; for they feared to put Condé to death, and leave so many of his friends alive to avenge him. Past examples had taught them that it is in vain to cut down the body of a tree, how high and lofty soever, if there be any quick roots left, which may shoot forth new sprouts. 

After their fierce suppression of the Amboise conspiracy, the Guises returned to Fontainebleau with the court in their pocket. Meantime France wailed under a grinding tyranny which could no longer be endured. Even the just choked émuete was not able with all its blood to stifle the agonized cry for relief. Something must be done; and it was determined to convene an assembly of the Notables, without reference to party or creed, for the investigation of the existing evils: all proved grievances were to be remedied—such was the burden of the Guises' syren song.

The Montmorenci's and the Chatillons attended; but fearful of being entrapped, they were accompanied by a long train of mailed cavaliers, the escort of the old constable alone numbering eight hundred men-at-arms.

The sky brightened for a moment. Chancellor Olivier, a statesman of moderate views, but weak and yielding, was so affected by the brutal policy of the princes of Lorraine, that just as the conspiracy of Amboise was definitively quelled, he died of grief at the holocaust of immolated victims. It is related of him, that when the cardinal of Lorraine called on him just before his decease, he turned his face to the wall, and refused to see him, saying, "I will look no more upon his face, for he is the accursed cardinal who is the cause of all the condemnations."

Olivier was succeeded in the chancellorship by Michael 1'Hôpital, a lawyer of distinguished fame, whom Brantome calls a second Cato, who did his utmost to inaugurate a reign of peace, and whose memory France is bound to revere as the active, unwearied friend of tolerant politics.

The king of Navarre and Condé had been urgently summoned to attend the convention; but their wiser partisans, familiar with the wily character and deadly rancor of the Guises, advised them to absent themselves, and they followed this prudent counsel.

The debates at Fontainebleau were long and animated. Coligny on his knees presented to Francis a petition from the Huguenots. The king handed it to his secretary L'Aubespine to read. He commenced: "A request of the people who address their prayers to God, according to the true rule of piety;" and when he had gotten thus far, he was interrupted by the clamors of the Guises' adherents. Francis commanded silence; and the secretary resumed reading the memorial, which contained a prayer that the prevalent persecutions for conscience' sake might cease; it showed also that those who were nicknamed heretics were quite ready to abide by the declarations of Scripture, asking only to be convicted of error from the Bible; that the pope was not a fit person to decide such matters, since his position as the leader of the hosts of error made him necessarily more partial than just; and the paper concluded by calling upon the king himself to arbitrate.

When L'Aubespine had finished, the cardinal took the floor, and opening the flood-gates of his wrathful bitterness, poured forth a torrent of vituperative epithets. "The docility, the meekness," he said, "of these perfect Christians, these new evangelicals, might be judged by the flood of libels leveled at himself; that, for his own part, having collected no less than twenty-two scandalous writings against his single self, he carefully preserved them as badges of honor." He added, that "though he pitied the ignorant, who were misled, extreme measures ought to be adopted against those who carried arms without the permission of the king."

Coligny, in his reply, said that "his voice was that of fifty thousand Huguenots." "Well then," retorted the duke of Guise with bitter emphasis, "I will break their heads with a hundred thousand papists whom I will lead against them."

This verbal tilt is said to have been the beginning of the mortal feud between the duke of Guise and the admiral, who had heretofore been warm personal friends—a hatred never appeased. Crimination and recrimination succeeded, mutual defiances were haughtily exchanged, and amid great confusion the conference was adjourned, and the convocation of the states-general was decided upon, to whom all the political and religious points of controversy were referred.

While this rude blast was rushing over France, and roaring in the antique galleries of lordly palaces, the still small voice of the Word was making its way into the homes of praying men. In private chambers, in the lecture-rooms and refectories, students, and even masters of arts, were to be seen reading the Latin Testament, Erasmus' Greek version, and even the Bible in French. Animated groups were discussing the rationale of the Reformation. "When Christ came on earth," said some, "he gave the word; and when he ascended up into heaven, he gave the Holy Spirit. These are the two forces which created the church, and these are the forces which must regenerate it." "No," replied the partisans of Rome, "it was the teaching of the apostles at first, and it is the teaching of the priests now." "The apostles," rejoined the Huguenots; "yes, 'tis true, the apostles were, during their ministry, a living scripture; but their oral teaching would infallibly have been altered by passing from mouth to mouth. God willed, therefore, that these precious lessons should be preserved to us in their writings, and thus become the ever undefiled source of truth and salvation." "To set the Scriptures in the foremost place, as your pretended reformers are doing," replied the monks and their satellites, "is to propagate heresy." "And what are the reformers doing," queried their apologists, "but what Christ did before them? The sayings of the prophets existed in the time of Jesus only as scripture, and it was to this written word that Christ appealed when he founded his kingdom. And now in like manner the teaching of the apostles exists only as scripture; and imitating Christ, it is to this written word that we in our turn appeal, in order to reestablish the kingdom of our Lord in its primitive condition. The night is far spent; the day is at hand; all is in motion—in the lofty ancestral chateaus of the nobility, in the classic aisles of our universities, in the mansions of the rich, and in the lowly dwellings of the poor. If we wish to scatter the darkness, must we light the shriveled wick of some old lamp? Or shall we not rather open the doors and shutters, and admit freely into the house the great light which God himself has hung in the heavens?"

But while by these and kindred conversations the Huguenots were burying the Romanists in their own nonsense, public events were marching towards a crisis.

Although the Bourbon princes had absented themselves from Fontainebleau, the Guises had strongly suspected that some of their emissaries were present, who were empowered to negotiate with the leaders of the court opposition, with Montmorenci, with the Chatillons, and the rest. From information received, they arrested a Gascon gentleman named La Saque; he was put to the torture, and the confession that Navarre and Condé were prepared to take the field as soon as the states-general were convened at Orleans, was wrung from his unwilling lips. "Dip the wrapper of this letter in water," faltered La Saque, enfeebled by the rack, and whose quivering sinews yet anguished him. The inquisitors hastened to comply with the direction, when lo, the whole blot lay disclosed. What had before seemed blank paper, teemed with ominous meaning. The handwriting of Dordois, the constable's secretary, became visible; a letter to the vidame of Chartres was revealed, and the Guises learned that, despite the failure of the Amboise intrigue, the hostile nobles still hoped to succeed in expelling them from France.

The Bourbons were soon apprized of the apprehension of La Saque, but they were at first uncertain whether he had made any disclosures, as his confession was kept a profound secret. But the imprisonment of the vidame of Chartres, one of their most faithful adherents, who was shut up in the Bastile and treated with great rigor, convinced them that their projects were known. They were soon specially summoned to Orleans by Francis. But traversing Gascony at the head of a considerable number of gentlemen, both Romanists and Huguenots, pledged to support them, they bade defiance to the king's mandate. However, repeated commands from the court, intimating that further disobedience would be deemed an act of overt rebellion and constructive treason, imperiling both their liberties and their lives, intimidated the feeble spirit of the king of Navarre, and he dismissed his little army, saying, "I must obey, but I will obtain your pardon of the king." "Go," said an old captain, "and ask pardon for yourself; our safety is in our good swords;" and the gentlemen who composed this nucleus force broke ranks indignantly, and separated for their homes.

In the month of October, the Bourbon princes set out for Orleans. Navarre, anxious not to make a misstep, made the greatest, faux pas. He walked straight into the net, and death touched both Condé and himself so closely, that its clammy fingers might have been felt.

The Guises were prepared for a crushing victory. They had persuaded the king, by perverting La Saque's confession, that the princes of the blood, and especially Condé, whom they most feared on account of his energy, boldness, and talents, had conspired against his life; and they urged him for his personal safety to arrest Condé as an example. To this advice the irritated monarch lent a willing ear. When Condé reached Orleans in the latter part of October, he ordered him into his presence, reproached him with his many supposed crimes, and without deigning to hear any reply, commanded his immediate imprisonment.

The trial soon followed, before the chancellor and some commissioners chosen by the Parliament, now become a mere echo of the Guises. The prince refused to plead, protested against the competence of this mushroom tribunal, and demanded, as a prince of the blood, to be tried by the king in person and by the peers of the realm. This privilege, though perfectly legal and strictly in accordance with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, was refused, and Condé was sentenced to be beheaded on the tenth of the following December.

When Condé was informed of the decision, his tranquility was unruffled. A priest was sent to him to perform mass. " What want you, reverend sir?" queried the prince. "I come to prepare you for death," was the reply. "This is a work," said Condé reverently and solemnly, "that I can safely trust with my Master; it rests between God and myself. Leave me, good father; it is time for the work to begin."

The priest retired, shocked at this blasphemy.

Then a gentleman of the court, an emissary of the Guises, came to Condé's cell. The prince received him with the courtesy which distinguished him. Having expressed his deep sympathy, the courtier hinted that possibly affairs might yet be accommodated, and requested the prince to appoint him mediator.

"I ask but one Mediator," said Condé with an upward gesture, "and that one is interceding for me now at the throne of God. Return, my lord, to your employers, and tell them you have failed in your mission."

One more trial yet awaited him. His wife was conducted to his prison. When she entered, she threw herself into her husband's arms, unable to speak.

"Now this is kind," said Condé with rare tact. "I know your errand: it is to confirm, to support, to give new strength to your husband; to tell him that you will live to perform his duties and your own; to teach our children that their father, though dying an ignominious death, still bore a true and loyal heart. And now farewell. Let us not prolong this painful interview. Nothing can be done by your means or mine; it is hopeless. Let us not add disgrace to sorrow. All things are in the hands of God; he may yet save a life that has been sincerely devoted to his cause."

Again the princess would have spoken; but Condé said, "No more, sweet wife; write all you would say. Farewell." And the hero quitted the apartment for an inner room.

When Condé's sentence was made public, his powerful relatives importuned the king for his pardon; but they plead in vain. His wife, Eleanora de Roye, Montmorenci's niece, accompanied by her children, threw herself before Francis, and with a woman's devotion endeavored to beat through the icy coldness of the king. "Madame," said the monarch, "your husband has assailed the crown, and conspired against my life; he must pay the penalty." In despair the poor princess implored the intercession of the Guises. "It is our duty," they said, "to strike off the head of heresy and rebellion at one blow."

The complete destruction of the Huguenot party was to follow the execution of Condé, and every one was to be compelled to choose between death or the signature of the confession of faith drawn up in 1542 by the Sorbonne, in response to Calvin's "Institutes."

The king of Navarre, though himself but little better than a prisoner, was for once extraordinarily active, and he made efforts constant and tireless to save his brother, even humbling himself to the cardinal of Lorraine, by whom, however, he was rudely repulsed. The duke of Guise had conceived a scheme to murder Navarre, and had even secured the king's assent to it. It was arranged that Francis should summon Navarre to his presence, and that at a sign from him some bravos, whom Guise would station behind the arms, should pierce their victim to the heart.

Navarre was indeed summoned into the king's chamber; but having received word from some quarter that to go would be to commit suicide, the reluctant prince refused to obey the citation. At length, after being summoned three times, he yielded, saying to a confidential friend as he departed on the perilous visit, "Duty compels me to go; I will defend myself, if attacked, to the last gasp. If I fall, take my shirt, stained with my blood, carry it to my son, and may life abandon him sooner than the purpose to avenge his murdered father." Navarre went to the king, listened calmly to his reproofs, replied gently, and retired unharmed: Francis' courage failed him at the critical moment. "Oh the fool, the coward; what a contemptible monarch we have!" exclaimed the incensed duke of Guise as he saw Navarre quit the royal presence unsmitten.

Disappointed in their hope of assassinating the Navarrese sovereign, the princes of Lorraine pressed with increased vehemence for Condé's early execution. The fatal day approached. Francis, unwilling to witness the ghastly spectacle, had resolved upon a tour to Chambord, when suddenly he was taken alarmingly ill. The chancellor instantly sent for Ambrose Paré, the king's physician; and upon being informed that Francis was not likely to recover, the cunning lawyer had recourse to a stratagem. He was very desirous of postponing Condé's death, and had delayed signing the order for his execution for several days by one pretext or another, using the weapons of his profession. Now the Guises hastened to him and implored him to sign; alarmed by the king's health, they feared that Condé might yet cheat the executioner. L’Hôpital pretended to be seized with a violent colic, which prevented him from examining the body of the decree, an essential preliminary to his signature; but when Francis' danger became imminent, the keen chancellor suddenly recovered from his pain, and hurrying off to the queen mother, advised her to take advantage of the posture of affairs by uniting herself closely with the princes of the blood, as the Guises had already despoiled her of power and influence. The Machiavellian Catherine agreed with L’Hôpital, and charged Coligny, who had been summoned with the other nobles to attend the assembly of the states-general, with the negotiation.

Thus stood affairs when, on the 5th of December, 1560, the thread which attached the shattered health of Francis to life, snapped, and the young king, then but seventeen, lay dead in the midst of a court which instantly gave itself up to the mockery of woe. 

Charles IX, a fatal name, an infamous memory, succeeded in his eleventh year to the vacant throne of his dead brother. Now once more the politics of the court were completely revolutionized. The Guises had been entrenched by the influence of their niece, Mary Stuart, over Francis II. Of this support they were now of course deprived. Chaos reigned, not Charles; and the selfish struggles of the chiefs of the several factions, ambitious not for their country's honor, but for their own governmental advancement, held France a second-rate power for a quarter of a century, and made this period one of the most calamitous in its history.

Upon Charles' coronation, Catherine de' Medici assumed the position of arbiter almost without opposition. Almost the first act of the infant king, under the queen mother's direction, was to write the Parliament, on the 8th of December, 1560, a letter, in which, after announcing his brother's death, he informed that body "that, considering his youth and confiding in the virtue and wisdom of the queen mother, he had requested her to undertake the administration of affairs, with the wise counsel and assistance of the king of Navarre, and of the gentlemen of distinction in the late king's counsel."

This crafty move at once deposed the princes of Lorraine, but their real influence remained almost untouched, since they were the representatives of the reactionists of France, as the Bourbons were of the Huguenots.

Still, many changes occurred. The command of the army was taken from the duke of Guise, and confided to Antony of Bourbon, who was made lieutenant-general of the kingdom.

The prince of Condé was released from prison; and while as a matter of form he retired for a little to his government of Bearn, his innocence was openly proclaimed at court.

The nobles who had been placed under the ban by the haughty Guises in the days of their regime, were recalled with honor, and the constable Montmorenci resumed his ancient functions, and regained his former titles.

At the council board of the king the queen mother was now seated as regent, while upon either hand the princes of Bourbon, the princes of Lorraine, and Montmorenci were clustered.

Between all the members of this heterogeneous cabinet a rankling hatred still existed, which threatened at every session to inaugurate fresh convulsions. But Catharine, cozened by her favorite theory of an "adjusted equilibrium," foolishly hoped to be able to hold the scales evenly poised between these implacable enemies.

The first measures of the new administration were indeed judicious. All persons were released who had been imprisoned for heresy, and their property was restored, while a general amnesty was proclaimed.

While the reconstruction of the cabinet was being effected, the states-general continued their sittings at Orleans. L'Hôpital implored the assembly to adopt such measures as would insure domestic tranquility, burying, in devotion to the general good, the bitter feuds of the past reign, which had so nearly kindled a civil war. But this statesmanlike and noble appeal of the patriotic chancellor was not much heeded.

The nobles, taught wisdom by experience, insisted, as a sine qua non, upon the exile of the princes of Lorraine. Condé, Navarre, and Montmorenci declared that if Catharine did not concede this measure to the safety of the state, they would march to Paris, proclaim one of themselves regent in her place, and execute their purpose. But this scheme was rendered abortive by the action of the chancellor, who prevailed upon the king to command the constable to remain at court; a command which Montmorenci was too old and wily a courtier to disobey.

But a motion made about the same time by the king of Navarre in the states-general, had a more serious result. He proposed a searching examination into the financial system of the preceding reign, and that a return of all excessive gratifications in money or lands to the late court favorites be speedily ordered. This motion instantly made a flutter in the dove-cote, and alienated a powerful friend. Everyone felt that it was a blow at the extortion of the Guises, but the blow struck beyond them. It affected the gratuities of Diana de Poitiers, the marshal Saint André, an old chum of Henry II, and the servile instrument of the duchess de Va1entinois, who had battened upon the gains incident to his office of pimp, and of Montmorenci himself, since one of his sons had married a daughter of Diana, and he had shared largely in the public plunder. A community of interest made this horde of thieves, but yesterday deadly foemen, fast friends today: all minor differences were buried in the unanimous desire to preserve ill-gotten wealth; and the consequence was, an infamous coalition. The Guises, Montmorenci, and Saint André united under the name of the Triumvirate. These abandoned nobles swore at the altar to forget their old quarrels; and in order to give a religious flavor to their avaricious league, they signed a treaty by which they pledged themselves to the extermination of heresy. It was a fitting collocation; a horde of titled plunderers, met to preserve their booty from the clutch of justice, and leagued to earn a good right to their stolen gold by filching the yet more costly jewel of life from their innocent countrymen whose creed taught them better things.

The Triumvirate had a powerful ally in the Spanish ambassador, who had a seat at the council, pretending that his master, Philip II, the most bigoted king in history, had taken France under his protection. And such was the wretched and disgraceful condition of France, torn by the internecine factions, that this insolent foreigner was tamely permitted to dictate its policy. This Spaniard was personally and politically attached to the Guises, who sacrificed the honor of France and the dignity of the crown to secure his protection.

The nation was now divided into two great parties, into which all the minor factions had melted the Triumvirate, supported by the holy see and by the Romanists; the Bourbon princes, at the head of the Huguenots, and backed by those who, indifferent about religious creeds, longed for the inauguration of political reform, and for the reinstatement of France in her natural position of a commanding power in Europe.

Between these parties stood the queen mother, muttering her shibboleth, and eternally grasping the shadow of power, but never its substance.

The Triumvirate and the Bourbons were about equally matched, and Catherine long hesitated which way to lean. Finally judging that it would be safest to favor the Huguenots for the moment, she permitted the eager chancellor to wring from the states-general a decree, published in July, 1561, and hence called the Edict of July, which relieved the Huguenots from the punishment of death without a judicial condemnation, but which still refused them their principal prayer, permission to assemble for public worship.

This edict was the pretext for a simulated reconciliation between Condé and Francis of Guise. They met at the palace, where the king desired that the duke should declare how affairs had been managed at Orleans. Guise accused the late king of having peremptorily ordered the imprisonment of Condo; on which the prince answered, looking earnestly at the duke, "Whoever put that affront upon me, I hold him to have been a scoundrel and a villain." "And I also," replied the hypocritical duke; "but it does not regard me in the least."

They then dined together, interchanged vows of friendship, and separated with mutual, but smothered curses,

"And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield."

such was the apparently placid, yet really uneasy and abnormal political situation—a heterogeneous cabinet, a double-faced edict, a hollow reconciliation—when a remarkable event occurred, the famous colloquy of Poissy was convoked.

The chancellor L’Hôpital, eager in the pursuit of his panacea for the existing evils, a grand conference upon religious differences, in which both Romanists and Huguenots should be represented, and in which theological rights should be definitively defined and regulated, persuaded Catherine de' Medici to assent to his project, and to command the debate.

The Roman publicists and orators were reluctant to accede to the conference; but stung by the jeers of the evangelicals, who hailed the project of a free colloquy with enthusiasm, they finally consented.

Accordingly, after great preparations, the oratorical representatives of the two ecclesiastical parties met, in the month of August, 1561, in the little village of Poissy, a short distance from St. Germaine, where the royal family then resided.

The leading Roman disputant was the cardinal of Lorraine, a prelate of fine, though sadly perverted intellect, of rare scholarship, and whose discourse, sustained by a never-failing memory, flowed from him intelligibly and gracefully. He was assisted by five other cardinals and by forty bishops.

The reformers were represented by Theodore Beza, a divine of singular genius, erudition, acumen, and eloquence, the friend and biographer of Calvin, who was supported by twelve celebrated doctors of the Reformation, among whom were Marloratus and Pierre Martyr.

On the ninth of September the session opened with great éclat. Never had a grander audience been convened, not even when Luther's Demosthenian eloquence sounded over Worms. The king himself attended the first sitting, accompanied by the queen mother, his elder brother Henry of Anjou, his sister Margaret de Valois, the Bourbon princes, the princes of Lorraine, the old constable, the ministers of state, the holder of the great seal, and the chief officers of the crown.

The debate was opened by L’Hôpital, in a conciliatory address, which breathed the spirit of a politician, not of a theologian; for, careless about matters of religious belief, he was anxious only to preserve a false peace, to tide over differences. He proposed a compromise, and urged the papists to relax upon some points, in order to win back the Calvinists. This conservative, Erasmian course was distasteful to both parties. It was thought, and rightly thought, that in radical differences radical methods should be employed.

When the chancellor finished his speech, Beza, the orator of the Huguenots, was called on to state his opinions. The questions at issue were two, the authority of the church of Rome and transubstantiation.

The Protestant orator stepped forward into the middle of the hall, knelt, and prayed God to enlighten his mind and inspire him with the luminous truth, and then commenced his address. He adduced numerous and irresistible arguments to disprove the assumption of Rome that she alone is the true church, made a profession of the reformed faith, expatiated upon the rigors, unchristian and abhorrent, which were exercised against the primitive theology, defended the different points which Rome disputed, and after an exhaustive discussion of the dogma of the real presence in the eucharist, concluded with the affirmation that Christ was as far from the sacramental elements as the highest heavens were from the earth..

Horrified by this bold declaration, the adherents of Latin orthodoxy broke out into vociferous clamors. The cardinal of Tournon suddenly started from his seat, and after asserting that he entirely disapproved of the colloquy, and had only sanctioned it in deference to the wish of Catharine de' Medici, exhorted the infant king not to be led astray by the subtle and impetuous eloquence of Beza, but to suspend his judgment until he had listened to the reply of the orthodox divines. Tournon further pointed out the impropriety of the young monarch's attendance upon the debates, as they involved questions above the capacity of his tender age: this hint was taken, for Charles did not afterwards appear.

The cardinal of Lorraine then rose to speak, and he delivered a harangue of great astuteness and rhetorical talent. When he concluded, the cardinals and bishops formed a circle around him, and declared that he had expounded the true faith, for which they were all ready to suffer martyrdom.

Beza demanded to reply, but since the hour was late, the conference was adjourned to the following day.

The debates continued through several days, and Beza astonished his opponents by his accurate learning, his acute reasoning, his evangelical fervor, and his animated, graphic eloquence. Still the good results of the colloquy were scarcely perceptible; the ecclesiastics in general were convinced that no reform could take place without stripping them of their vast wealth, of their usurped power, and of their impunity. And when the conference of Poissy was dissolved, the disputed points stood just as unsettled as when the debates commenced, while both sides claimed the victory. But while in some respects the colloquy resulted unsatisfactorily, in others it was not without effect. The papists felt that they had committed a blunder in consenting to it at all—it compromised a faith which had existed for so many ages; the bare discussion of these questions was an acknowledgment that Rome might err. "The government," says a violent Jesuit who wrote at a later day, "committed a grave error, or at least idleness, in permitting the conference of Poissy, instead of sending Beza and his troop to the then sitting council of Trent."

Besides this moral gain and recognition, several bishops were so affected by Beza's masterly arguments, that they devoted themselves to an inquiry after the truth. By the conversations which they had with Catherine de' Medici, they so far wrought a change in her sentiments, that she not only invited Beza, but actually insisted upon his remaining at the court. The divine complied; and protected by the queen mother, delivered a series of powerful sermons which greatly advanced the Reformation.

Catherine did more; she wrote an epistle to the pontiff: "Those of the reform," she said, "are neither Anabaptists nor libertines; they believe in the twelve articles of the apostles' creed; therefore many persons think that they ought not to be cut off from communion with the mother church. What danger could there be in taking away the images from the churches, and in retrenching some useless forms in the celebration of the sacraments? It would further be very beneficial to allow to all the communion in both kinds, and to permit divine service to be performed in the vulgar tongue."

Thus spoke Catharine de' Medici shortly after the conclusion of the colloquy of Poissy. She boldly recommended to the sovereign pontiff the adoption of a series of innovations which the most heated enthusiast, the most Utopian dreamer among the Huguenots would not have demanded. Yet this was the woman who, a little later, instigated the massacre of St. Bartholomew! Catharine is the Sphinx of history; and though many an Œdipus has assumed to solve the riddle, the wily tiger queen yet remains a mystery. Of course Beza's eloquence could not have touched her heart; she had none—only a muscle to circulate the blood. It is probable that Beza's flattering reception and retention at court, and the papal letter, were both simply parts of some scheme for preserving the balance of power in her own hands.

Be this as it may, Paul IV was alarmed, and he instantly instructed his legate at Paris to spare no exertions for strengthening the papal party in France.

The most plausible plan for the achievement of this purpose seemed to be to alienate the king of Navarre from the Huguenots. It was thought that if that monarch could be won over to Rome, "heresy would be a clock without a pendulum." The legate, seconded by a score of cunning satellites, commenced the congenial work. Every wile which could affect the human mind and heart was put in active operation. Temptation after temptation was thrown into his way. The pope offered to dissolve his marriage with Jane d'Albrét, on the ground of her heresy; the Guises offered him the hand of their niece Mary Stuart, with her prospective claims on the English throne; a marriage with the king's sister Margaret de Valois was hinted at as quite possible; but to all of these seductions Navarre was deaf. He even refused a promise of Sardinia, as an indemnification for that portion of Navarre of which the Spanish king had deprived him.

Finding that Antony of Bourbon could not be bribed to desert his faith, the Jesuits changed their tactics. Then this man, proof to all the proposals of temporal advantage which had been made him, fell a victim to his own pride and vanity.

Antony of Navarre was known throughout his whole life as a man amiable, but weak and vacillating; who, although he adopted his opinions with vivacity, did not hold them with firmness. And when with insidious and tireless zeal it was insinuated that Condé was the actual chief of the Huguenot party, while he was only his brother's second, his pride and vanity revolted. He hesitated; the king's youth opened for him a long career of authority; and if he became a papist, his power and influence in Europe would be so much enhanced, that he might dictate to Philip II of Spain the restoration of his stolen kingdom. The Spanish ambassador himself breathed this insinuation into his ear.

Quite overcome and dazzled blind to the infamy of the action by his brilliant prospects, Navarre at length succumbed; the renegade king joined the triumvirate, and this "lost leader," in the excess of his newly acquired zeal, became one of the bitterest persecutors of his old companions. Similar revulsions are the never-failing accompaniment of political and theological treason.

Navarre soon proceeded to carry his new opinions into practice. He declared that he considered the reformed preachers as charlatans, and expressed his determination to remove his son—afterwards the famous Henry IV—from their influence, and place him under Romanist governors. Jane d'Albrét, who had inherited her faith and Christian devotion from her mother Margaret of Navarre, the mother also of French reform, heard this avowal with dismay. After vain entreaties, she was compelled to yield; but passionately embracing her child, she exclaimed, "Oh, my son, if you renounce the religion of your mother, she will renounce and disinherit you. Deep to the faith in which you have hitherto been educated, and God will be your guide and support."

"My dear madame," said Catharine, who was present, "let me advise you to suppress this violence of emotion. I have always found it best to appear to yield. Assume a seeming conformity to your husband's will; even attend mass, and you will the more easily get the reins into your own hands."

To this characteristic advice Jane d’Albrét replied indignantly, "Rather than deny my faith by attending mass, if I had my son in one hand, and my kingdom in the other, I would throw them both into the sea."

Such was the difference between these two women and between their creeds.

But Jane d’Albrét was ere long relieved of her fears by her vain and vacillating husband's death.

Ere Navarre's defection startled France, the indefatigable chancellor, not discouraged by the failure of the colloquy of Poissy to apply a remedy to the ecclesiastical abases, contrived to convoke another assembly of the states-general at St. Germaine.

"The object of your deliberations," said L’Hôpital in his opening address to the deputies, "is simple and clear. Is it advantageous, in the existing state of affairs, to tolerate or to forbid the meetings of the Calvinists for the exercise of their devotions? That is the single question you have to decide. To come to a right conclusion, you must keep out of view whatever relates to creed, doctrine, or religious discipline. Even let it be assumed that Calvinism is one continuous error of judgment, is that a reason to bar their assemblies, or to justify the proscription of those French subjects who have embraced it? Can a man not be a good citizen without being a good Romanist? Do not then waste your time, or entangle yourselves in fruitless controversy, in the vain attempt to decide which is the true religion. We are not here to establish a mode of faith, but a rule of government."

It was thus that the keen and cautious chancellor exhibited his anxiety to make all vexed points of theology subservient to the vital interests of political government. By dexterously narrowing down the discussion into this limited space, and extracting the sting of theological hate, the triumph of the Huguenots was rendered certain; for had the duke of Guise affirmed that none but Romanists could be good citizens, the prince of Condé would have resented it as a personal affront, and demanded satisfaction at the sword's point. The papists were thus compelled to make concessions, or raise the standard of civil war, for which they were not yet fully prepared.

The assembly of St. Germaine therefore passed a decree, called the Edict of January, 1562, by which many of the disabilities of the Huguenots were removed. The reformers might meet unarmed without the walls of cities and towns, and the local magistrates were commanded to afford them protection; though prohibited from levying money to pay their preachers, they might receive any sum voluntarily contributed. In return for these concessions, the Huguenots were to restore all images and relics of saints which they had seized, and to pay tithe and other ecclesiastical dues, while their preachers were commanded to abstain from all violent invectives against the mass.

Some bloody scenes occurred in various sections after the promulgation of this edict; but as a whole the winter glided quietly away. The Huguenots were grateful and satisfied; the Romanists sullen and discontented. But both parties felt conscious of an approaching rupture, convinced that this temporary calm was only the harbinger of a fearful storm.

The Huguenots were surprised and grieved by the renegadism of the king of Navarre: the queen mother was alarmed; and to restore the equilibrium, she openly allied herself with the reform party.

Coligny, anxiously watchful for the interest of religion, was early apprized of the efforts being made to win over Antony of Bourbon; and when the illustrious deserter joined the Triumvirate, he was "sad, but not astonished;" be knew Navarre's character. He had suspected the motive of a mission to Spain in the early months of 1562, and employing persons to watch the emissary, he ordered them to arrest and search him on his return. Shortly after the messenger, in the garb of a pilgrim, endeavored to reenter France. He was seized and searched; nothing was found. Someone, however, observing that he threw away his staff, informed Coligny of the circumstance. The acute admiral ordered it to be brought to him; a countryman had picked it up and carried it to his cottage. On examination it was found that the staff was hollow, and that it contained a budget of letters from the king of Spain. Upon examining these letters, they were found to be directed to the king of Navarre, to the Triumvirate, to Catharine, and to others of the leading Roman chiefs, expressing poignant grief at the concessions recently made to heresy, and exhorting them to take arms and crush the Huguenots by a single blow, to effect which Philip offered to furnish men and money.

Catharine was absolutely frightened; Coligny was calm and resolute. The queen mother allied herself more closely than ever with the admiral. The admiral, perceiving that the foes of his faith were about to kindle the flames of civil war, worked with Titanic energy to prepare his party for the ordeal of battle. He united with Condé, and securing the appointment of that prince to the chief command of the reformers, called upon him to make a public confession of the Protestant creed.

The gallant prince complied; and so great was the effect of his example, that many nobles did not scruple to do likewise. The number of persons who came to the Faubourgs to hear the Reformation preached in a little time numbered fifty thousand, very respectable congregation.

Navarre, witnessing Coligny's activity, and galled perhaps by the presence of his old companion in arms, urgently pressed Catharine to banish him from court. She would consent, however, on but one condition: that the duke of Guise, the cardinal of Lorraine, and the marshal St. André, the original triumvirs, should also quit the capital for their estates. Unexpectedly to Catherine, her terms were accepted; for the chiefs of the reaction, knowing that their interests might safely be entrusted to Montmorenci and the king of Navarre, who were to remain in Paris, were willing to go into temporary exile for the purpose of removing their dangerous rivals from the vicinity of St. Germaine.

But this compromise did not long stop up the mouth of Vesuvius with its cotton. The adherents of Guise at the capital wrote him that the queen mother was every day becoming more closely connected with the Huguenots, and urged him to hasten back to Paris. Guise obeyed the summons, leaving his estate of Joinville towards the close of February, 1562. His suite, already numerous when he quitted his chateau, was augmented as he advanced, until, when lie reached the little town of Vassy, he was at the head of a small army.

At Vassy a fatal event occurred. A Huguenot congregation attending divine worship in a barn, attracted the attention of the bigoted chieftain and his fanatical retinue. Filled with hate, and armed, they rushed upon the reformers, who endeavored to shut the doors against the assailants. A collision resulted; Guise himself was slightly wounded in the cheek by some chance missile, and his followers, infuriated at the sight of his blood, massacred the whole helpless congregation.

The news of this bloody foray spread with almost incredible rapidity; it reached the metropolis before its hero; and when Guise appeared, the civic mob of Paris hailed the "butcher of Vassy" with "frenzied shouts and tears of joy." A sanguinary and cowardly slaughter of an unarmed assembly, convened for religious worship, was hailed as a great and heroic exploit.

In later days Guise protested that he had no hand in this wholesale assassination; but whether he intended it or not, it is enough that he did not prevent it. The deed was his; upon his head history heaps her malediction.

Nor was Vassy the only scene of violence. Cahors, Toulouse, Sens, Amiens, and Tours hastened to follow in Guise's bloody footsteps. At Tours a refinement of cruelty was displayed. Three hundred Huguenots were shut up without food for three days; then, tied together two by two, they were led to a slaughter-house and butchered like beasts.

At Sens also there was an exhibition of atrocious fanaticism; during three successive days the bell of the cathedral invited the citizens to murder the reformers. Even the vines which embellished their dwellings were plucked up by the roots. The bodies of the victims, floating down the Seine, appeared to speak trumpet-toned to their brothers in the faith for justice. The Huguenots did indeed bestir themselves to obtain redress. When some of the shocking incidents of the massacres were related to Navarre, the traitor cried with a sneer, "They were all factious heretics." "Sire," replied Beza, who chanced to be present, with indignant emphasis, "I speak on behalf of a religion which pardons injuries, instead of resenting them; but remember, it is an anvil which has blunted many hammers."

But while one party demanded justice, the other clamored fiercely for the extermination of the Huguenots, and Montluc addressed a memoir showing how easily it might be effected.

Meantime Condé, overpowered, quitted Paris with his preachers and armed followers. "Caesar has not only crossed the Rubicon," wrote he to D'Andelot and Coligny, "he has already seized Rome, and his banners will shortly be everywhere displayed."

Guise was aware that in a coup d'etat audacity and energy were necessary. Catharine was sojourning at Meaux with her royal son. The princes of Lorraine sped thither, seized the regent and the king, and hastening back to Paris, received another ovation. Their captives were lodged in a building which had peen used as a prison for a century. The possession of the king's person was the grand object of their policy, and they succeeded, spite of the prayers and menaces of the queen mother.

Emboldened by their success, the triumvirs rejected all compromises, all overtures, and determined to strike a vigorous blow at once in the very commencement of their lawless campaign; they designed a revocation of the tolerant edict of January, in the chief cities first, and then throughout the kingdom.

Meantime Paris was surrendered to a carnival of fanaticism; the cardinal of Lorraine commenced preaching in the style of his predecessors, St. Dominic and Torquemada; and Montmorenci displayed his zeal on the evening of the youthful monarch's return to the metropolis, by plundering the Huguenot chapels, destroying the books, and building bonfires with the reading-desks of the preachers. The fanatical violence with which he sought after and destroyed these desks, gained the hoary old bigot the soubriquét of Capitaine Brule-Bancs.

While these events were occurring at the capital, Condé was not idle. He received, through a secret messenger, a letter from Catherine, in which she implored him to save the mother and the child, at the same time assuring him that all her hopes rested upon him; the liberty of the king, the prosperity of France, all was staked upon the pluck and loyalty of the Huguenots.

Condé at once published two manifestoes, which roused France as with the blast of a trumpet. The eloquent prince implored the Huguenots to arm and attack their common enemy, and he conjured all true Frenchmen, whatever their creed, to couch their lances for the liberation of their captive sovereign. The response was enthusiastic. Orleans was seized after a sanguinary battle, and there Condé set up his banner. This city became the Huguenot rendezvous.

The triumvirs, to destroy the effect of Condé's appeal, forced the irresponsible toy who at this awful moment played king, to sign and publish an official denial of the charges of the Bourbon prince, and an affirmation that both his mother and himself enjoyed perfect freedom; but the cheat was too transparent, and even the reluctant pen of an old contemporaneous historian, devoted to that side, was forced to pen these significant words: "It is most certain that the young king was seen by many to weep that day, being persuaded that the Romanist lords had restrained his personal liberty; and that the queen mother, being discontented that her wonted arts had not prevailed, and foreseeing the mischiefs of the opening war, seemed perplexed, and spoke no word to any one; of which Guise made light, saying publicly, 'The food is always good, whether it proceeds from love or force.' "

The enthusiasm of the Huguenots was at floodtide. They were very soon in possession of the principal cities of the provinces—Lyons, Bourges, Vienne, Rouen, and the rest. All the Orleanoise was subjected to them, and the whole of Normandy declared in their favor. Levies of men were everywhere made to swell their embattled ranks, and detachments flocked from every quarter, with the motto "God and liberty" emblazoned on their banners, to Condé's camp.

Brantome relates that a squadron of fifty Huguenot cavaliers set out from Metz for Orleans, and M. d'Espan, governor of Verdun, learning the circumstance, determined to cut them off on the march. When he came up with them, they had taken a position in an old windmill, where they defended themselves with stubborn valor, until night closed the combat. Before morning they made a sortie, surprised their weary assailants, and routed them. The cavaliers then recommenced their march, and after thirty different skirmishes, they reached Orleans with the loss of but three of their number, an incident which the quaint old chronicler justly thinks illustrative of remarkable pluck and zeal.

The leaders of the reformed host were Condé's nearest relatives: there were the three Chatillons, the cardinal, Coligny, and D'Andelot, the uncles of his consort; the Count Porcian, who was married to his niece; Francis de Rochefoucault, who was married to his sister-in-law, of whom it was said that he could bring an army into the field composed of his friends and vassals in Poitou alone. The viscount René de Rohan led the Bretons, Antony, count de Grammont, the Gascons; Montgomery—the count who had accidentally slain Henry II in the tournament of 1559—was present from Normandy, and Hangest de Genlis from Picardy. There assembled at Orleans in a short time three thousand gentlemen, of whom Lanquét says, "If they were destroyed, the very seed of masculine virtue would have been exterminated in France."

The triumvirs received assistance not only from the reactionary home party, they drew upon Romanist Europe. The king of Spain, the pope, Cosmo, duke of Florence, all lent jubilant levies; and soon the Guises marched towards Orleans at the head of ten thousand men-at-arms, the vanguard of the larger host to come.

Between the hostile ranks of Condo and Guise the government of a boy and a woman disappeared.

Catherine made one last effort to regain her lost prestige. As usual, her weapons were hypocrisy and treason. Instigated by Guise, with whom she appears now to have allied herself, overawed perhaps by the threat that she would be deposed even from the nominal regency, unless she lent herself to the projects of the usurpers, the queen mother attempted to entrap Condé.

A personal conference was appointed between them at Thuri. Condé, unsuspicious of treachery, nearly fell into the snare. It was proposed that he and his friends should quit France for a time, while the triumvirs also retired from the court. "Offer these terms," said the wily queen in a seductive whisper; "they will certainly be refused; then you will gain the credit of having made a patriotic proposition, which will augment your strength."

The frank soldier for once attempted to play Machiavelli; he was unequal to the part. Condé assented. After some delay, the council replied, "Your terms are accepted," but no allusion was made to the retirement of the triumvirs. Condé was thunderstruck; his diplomatic ruse had recoiled upon himself; Catherine had played him false. His troops were indignant; his nobles protested against the validity of the contract; the preachers inveighed against the regent's duplicity; and Condé, declaring that he had been deceived, retracted the agreement, and mounting his horse, bade defiance to his own and his country's foes.

This faux pas convinced the Huguenots that no reliance could be placed either on the friendship or the good faith of Catharine de' Medici.

Condé was anxious to strengthen his cause by alliances with the Protestant powers of Europe. In Germany, the proofs he advanced in justification of his action were regarded as satisfactory. The old landgrave, Philip of Hesse, gave Marshal Rollshausen orders to advance into France with some thousands of lanzknechts and arquebusiers.

The Huguenots also dispatched a mission to England to sue Elizabeth for an alliance. The stingy queen agreed to aid them on condition that Havre de Grace was delivered to her as a compensation for Calais, whose loss still rankled. This conceded, Elizabeth furnished one hundred thousand crowns, and garrisoned Havre de Grace, Dieppe, and Rouen, with six thousand English yeomen.

Towards the close of June, 1562, the contending armies opened the campaign. Condé and Coligny left Orleans to attack Paris and deliver the king; the triumvirs quitted the metropolis to besiege the Huguenots in Orleans. The two parties were about equal, each having ten thousand men.

To detail the various skirmishes which steeped the provinces in fraternal blood, to enumerate the villages plundered and razed, to record the deeds of cruelty committed by individual and remorseless leaders of roving bands attached to either army, would occupy volumes, and would farm a narrative of crime hideously diversified in its features, from which humanity would recoil. Both sides undoubtedly committed excesses. Where the Huguenots triumphed, they destroyed altars and broke images; where the papists were successful, Bibles were burned and heretics were racked.

The picture of France rent by demoniacs is the most melancholy and pathetic that ever employed the pencil of an artist. Not Angelo nor Raphael nor Rembrandt could have originated so woeful a canvas.

It is an unquestionable historic fact, that in this drama of death the papists were the most frenzied and remorseless actors. The testimony of the Abbé Anquétil will scarcely be impeached in the court of Rome. Let us see what this inimical witness has to say: "For the heretics there was no security, no asylum; the faith of treaties and the sanctity of oaths were alike set at naught. Tortures, contrived with cruel care for delaying death and increasing the duration of pain, were inflicted upon persons who had surrendered upon capitulation. Husbands and fathers were poignarded in the arms of their wives and daughters, who were then violated in the sight of the dying loved ones. Women and children were treated with a brutality which defies description. Aged magistrates, the victims of an unbridled rage, were insulted after death by the populace, who dragged their yet palpitating entrails through the streets, and even ate their quivering flesh."

Beaumont, baron des Adrets, one of the Huguenot leaders, determined to meet cruelty with cruelty, forgetful of the mild tenets of the faith which he professed to serve. He killed and laid waste with a barbarity which made his own officers shudder; superstitious nurses frightened children by the simple repetition of his name: his vengeful acts drew forth an admonition from the admiral, and a severe reproof from Calvin.

Beaumont's rival was the ferocious Blaise de Montluc, who relates in his memoirs, with the utmost sang froid, the chilling cruelties which he practiced upon the heretics: "I procured," he says, "two executioners, who were called my lackeys, because they were so constantly with me in active service."

Thus, while France wailed and heaven wept, the hideous dance of the loosened furies of death and hell went smoothly on. 

Before a fanatical conception of religion, morality, which lies at the base of civilization and of human society, vanished. A kind of fatalism reigned. A species of resignation linked with enmity, of religion mingled with hatred—this was what took place in these sad years. It was like a bloody Scottish feud, in which those who held the same principles regarded themselves as members of one clan.

Both armies were in the field, and Guise especially was viciously active.

Navarre assailed and captured Bourges. Then pausing and looking towards Paris, he asked, Where next?

The Triumvirate hungered for Orleans, the rendezvous and the dépôt of Condé and the Chatillons. Catharine said No; she thought that if the citadel of Protestantism should fall, the already over-powerful league would shoot up to a still loftier pinnacle. "Let us rematch Rouen," said the wily queen; "these bulldog Englishmen have seized Normandy; we must shake it from their greedy maw."

The Parisians were cozened; besides, the Huguenot garrison of Rouen would suffer no merchandise to ascend the river from the sea. Inexorable Rouen stood guard upon the Atlantic. Trade was sulky; commerce was angered. "We will give two hundred thousand crowns to the king, if he will drive the Huguenots from Rouen," cried the Parisian merchants. Navarre marched into Normandy, and at the close of September, 1562, laid siege to Rouen.

Montgomery held the town, supported by two thousand English men-at-arms, twelve hundred choice infantry from Condé's army, four squadrons of horse, and one hundred gentlemen who had volunteered their services.

The attack was vigorous; the defense was obstinate. A breach was no sooner made, than the indefatigable Montgomery threw up behind it a new entrenchment. "This count is a necromancer; he juggles in war," said Navarre dispiritedly, as he returned one day from a foiled assault.

Mining and countermining succeeded. The Huguenot bombs fell within Navarre's lines with but slight effect; burying themselves in the soil softened by recent rains, they only made volcanoes of mud; the explosion was changed into a splash.

At length, on the 25th of October, Guise, who had joined the army before Rouen, led an assault, after a spirited harangue, the effect of which he heightened by a brilliant display of chivalric valor, Rouen was captured by this coup de main; Montgomery lead only time to leap into a galley which was in port. By the promise of liberty, he induced the galley slaves to row so well, that he got to sea despite some chains swung across the river a few leagues below the city by the besiegers, to prevent the English sending any assistance from the ocean. Shortly after, Montgomery safely touched the shores of Britain.

Rouen was pillaged through three days; many citizens were massacred; the reformed preachers especially were hunted down with vindictive cruelty; and Marloratus, who had been a central figure at the Poissy colloquy, was hung in front of the cathedral, amid